


Heritage

by meanoldauthor



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Backstory, Fluff, Gen, child charachter, like way pre-game, pre-game, you wanna meet adal's parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 20:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: Wait, this rambunctious child grows up to be the Courier?A slightly different, out-of-sequence part of the Mean Old Lady series.





	Heritage

“Ouray, my dear, light of my life…”

“Yes?” He looked up warily, not liking her tone.

Jia turned, holding Adal upside-down, shrieking excitement. “Please take our darling bundle of joy out with you today, before she bursts from eating though our new supply of jerky.”

Ouray took her under the arms and held her upright, trying to stay stoic as she giggled. “Are you sure? She’s fed up so well, I bet we could get pounds if we just dried her.”

“No, no!” she screamed, laughing. She wiggled free and hid behind him, peeking back at her mother. “I’ll go forage!”

“Threatening to eat your own daughter!” Jia shook her head, rubbing at her mouth to hide a smile. “Get out of my sight, you monster.”

“Well, I’ll find the best forage in the commonwealth, and I won’t share with you, just for that.” He took her hand and snuck a kiss. Adal stuck out her tongue. “I was planning to be gone overnight. We shouldn’t move on until Berta’s ready to walk again, and that might take a week.”

Jia waved at them both, turning back to the tripods over the fires, picking up a bowl of salted meat. “Charmer. Away with you.”

Ouray finished packing his bag, tucking tools and supplies away as Adal handed them over in the wrong order. He let her hang on the edge of his poncho, tugging on the cords tied through the canvas. “You look like a buffler.”

He laughed, feeling for the hump his pack made under it. “Wish I had that much fat! Could spend years burning that instead of eating.”

She chattered as they left the camp, pointing at birds and grasses and the trees they had camped beside as a windbreak. Ouray let her lead, jumping from one thing to the next, hoping she’d burn off a little energy before they needed to be quiet. “What’s this? Is it grass? Can we eat it?”

“Wheat!” he said, running the tops of the stems between his fingers. “Too young though, too green.”

“Oh,” she said, letting the stalk go.

“All these fields we’re on used to grow wheat,” Ouray said, tweaking her child’s scarf further over her eyes. “They’d stretch like an ocean of gold from horizon to horizon.”

“What’s an ocean?” she said, pulling the scarf back.

“It’s like a field of golden wheat, but water.”

“So…” She looked around, gaging the size of the field. “A lake.”

“A lake that wraps around the whole world, without ending,” Ouray said, waggling his eyebrows at her.

Her mouth made a perfect O of awe. “I wanna see an ocean.”

“Maybe we’ll Walk that way for you, someday.”

She was out of breath by the time they hit a fold in the land, trees struggling to reach above it. Adal flopped down in the grass, puffing, and Ouray squatted beside her, pulling his hood forward against the noon sun. “Have you eaten so much, you have no room for air?”

“I chased Sen all day, I’m tired,” she said, rolling onto her back. “N’I’m thirsty.”

“A tired Walker!” he said, pinching her toes. She scooted away, giggling, and he passed her his canteen. “Sounds like you ate a fortune in salt. Drink to even it out.”

“Why?” she said, slopping water down her chin.

“Why do you think you put salt on jerky?” Ouray said. Adal narrowed her eyes and shrugged. “Well, drink plenty, or you might shrivel up the same way.”

Her eyes widened, and she tipped the canteen up again.

He let her hang around his neck as he descended the hill into the valley, picking his way over rocks and rotting tree limbs. She twisted to look at everything, throwing him off balance. “What’s that noise?”

“A bird,” he said, testing a rock half-exposed by runoff.

“What’s on that tree?” She got a leg through his pack strap to point.

“Moss,” he grunted, bending a shrub out of his way.

“Why does it _smell?_ ”

“Fish farts.”

Adal giggled. “Why does that rock look like that?”

“It’s not a rock,” he said, slowly putting his weight on a crumbling log. “It’s a wide-mouth girlie-gobbler, it’ll swallow you up if it hears you.”

She squeaked and pressed her face against his chest. Ouray took it as a chance to make way to the bottom of the slope, stopping atop a boulder next to a slow-moving pond. “Okay,” he whispered, picking her up under the arms. “I think we’re safe, but you gotta stick close and be quiet. Got it?”

Adal pinched her lips shut, grabbing his poncho strings again. Ouray picked their way along the water, stepping over threads of runoff feeding it, the depth of the stream and speed picking up as they went. Frogs plopped away into the water as they passed, and he had to grab Adal by the back of her shirt more than once to keep her from going in after them. He sat her on his shoulders instead, and after stooping to inspect some of the plants growing near the water, she pulled back his hood. “Da? Is that a moss too?”

He followed her pointing, and gasped. “No, that’s dinner!” He skipped from rock to rock, approaching the tree, a mass of orange growth sprouting from the side. “Good find!”

“What is it?” she asked, leaning out to touch.

“A mushroom. Chicka-wood,” he said, drawing his forager’s knife, a long heavy cleaver. “Tastes like bird meat.”

“Oh.” She waited for him to finish trimming it, one easy slice. “What kind of bird?”

“Ground bird,” he said. “We’re in for a treat tonight, dearling.”

“I heard Tan say some mushrooms are poison,” she said.

A little sorting, and the whole thing fit into a basket hanging off his pack. “Well, he’s right!”

Adal leaned forward to look at him upside-down. “This isn’t a poison one?”

“Nope. This one’s still young and fresh, and chicka-woods only look like chicka-woods…Unless it’s mutated, which…” He shook his head and pulled something out of a pocket. “Here. You’ve got a good view up there, look through that and tell me if you see any more mushrooms.”

He felt her rest the field guide on the top of his head, the binding creaking as she paged through, sounding out words and leaning down for help with the longer ones. It kept her busy as he examined the marsh weeds, smelling and occasionally tasting, comparing them to pictures in another book.

Coming around a bend in the stream, Ouray whooped loud enough that Adal nearly fell. “Here we are, button!” He caught her as she overbalanced, setting her on her feet. “Dogreeds!”

“Dogreeds!” she shouted, feet squelching in the mud. “Dogreeds, dogreeds!” She bent one of the old, dried ones over, pulling fluff from the stem. “Tinder for ma, so we can make more jerky!”

“Put it all in here,” he said, tossing her another basket. “Tinder for fires, tubers for flour, stems for eating, fiber for weaving…We’ve done it! We’re the best foragers ever!”

Adal charged back and forth cheering, basket under her arm, waving a reed like a sword. Ouray grinned and let her run, wading into the plants, reaching to feel through the mud for the tubers beneath.

It was easy work with a good rhythm, and he hummed along as he washed the roots, used his knife to section the stems and tie them into bundles with their own leaves. He blinked at a tug on his poncho, noticing how the sun had shifted. “Da I’m bored. Can I go look for mushrooms?”

Adal looked up at him, muddy nearly to her waist, but holding a thankfully clean book. “Go on, dearling, but stay where I can see you. Don’t pick any barehanded until I have a look, and _don’t eat any!_ ” he shouted as she ran uphill.

She might have waved as she went, or might have stuck out an arm to keep her balance. Ouray shook his head and went back to his work.

Adal flopped down on her belly next to a tree, book in front of her, a cluster of grayish fungal fruits inches from her nose. She squinted at the book, bored with the first section—her da had tried to show her how it worked, matching things like color and size until it told you the right page to read—and turning to flip through the pictures instead. He had written in the margins, cramped little scribbles that she couldn’t make out.

None of the pictures matched, and she stood up, kicking at the ground. Foraging was _boring_. She could hear her da splashing away in the water, humming the jody about how to weave a good basket. He had said not to pick any mushrooms _barehanded_ , hadn’t he? Adal scratched through the humus on the forest floor, coming up with a big enough leaf that she could pluck the mushrooms without touching, dropping them in with the dogreed fluff. He could use the book on them later.

Adal wandered further uphill, watching the ground for anything interesting, discarding her reed sword for a bigger walking stick. Now and then, she glanced the way she’d come, making sure Ouray was in sight—the could see her back, right? She squinted downhill when he was just a vague brown movement between the trees, wondering if she ought to stop. 

Her eyes fell on a mass of weird, wrinkly growths in the leaf litter, and she scooted over on her heels, book open. She’d _seen_ those! And the book had the little smiley face licking its lips and everything! Adal danced on the spot, plucking them with a leaf just so she could tell her da that she had, tucking them in a different corner of the basket from the other mushroom, beside a gnarly piece of wood and some smooth rocks. Her da would be so proud…

There was a _boom_ of someone hitting a drum, followed by an angry spit.

Adal looked up slow, hunching on herself, an apology on her lips to whatever tribal must have lived in the valley. Her eyes went wide at the ragged brown mass before her, bigger than her arms around. An awful drowned-man-blue stem grew out of it, grown over with pulsing red wrinkles and warty lumps, and as it swiveled to point a moist black pit at her, she realized it must be its _head_.

It took a step towards her, and she screamed.

_”Adal!?”_

She ran toward her da’s voice, downhill, stopping screaming only long enough to draw air for another. He nearly overshot her, doubling back to sweep her up one-armed, machete in the other hand. “Adal where were—are you alright? Did you get hurt? What—”

“Th—gobbler, the girlie-gobbler, I saw it, it—”

“Shh, slow down, slow down. I have you.” He backed downhill, not turning away from the slope. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

“The gobbler, it heard me—”

“What did it look like?”

“A big ball of mud and leaves, and its head was rotty like a ghoul’s, and it was big as me, and big claw feet…” She buried her face against him, wiping her tears on his shirt. “We gotta go back to camp, and get ma and the other hunters.”

He bounced her gently, like he might soothe a younger child, frowning at the hillside and his piles of dogreeds. The sun had sunk low, the valley in shadow, the light coming through faint and golden. “There was just one?” He felt her nod, and knelt, putting her on her feet. “Alright, I need you to listen close,” he said, and she nodded, still wiping at her face. “And I’m going to ask you to be very brave. We can’t get back to camp before night, and if something’s out there it’s too dangerous in the dark—”

“But it _is_ and—”

“I know you saw something,” he said, and smoothed her hair back. “I trust you. It was probably an animal, so we’ll build a fire tonight to scare it off. I’ll stay up and watch for it, and you can sleep. Okay?”

Adal frowned, but nodded her head. “Okay.”

“Brave girl,” he said, and kissed her forehead. Standing, he held out one of the strings on his poncho. “Now, hang on. I don’t want you getting any further than arm’s reach, until sunrise.”

“Okay,” she said, winding it through her fingers. “I dropped your book. I’m sorry.”

“You got away safe, dearling. That’s what matters.”

“And my mushrooms. I found good ones,” she said, dragging like an anchor as he pulled down a bough from a pine tree.

“I bet you did, girlie. We can look for them tomorrow, when it’s light,” he said, trimming a handful of needles with a practiced swing of the machete. “You can carry this, we’ll need bedding for camp.”

Adal nodded, bundling it up under her arm, but watching the path uphill.

***

Ouray sat at the foot of the bedroll, legs folded, machete across his lap. His chin had dropped to his chest, as it did periodically, but instead of coming back up to peer out under the poncho-tent or feed the fire, he started to snore quietly.

Tucked up in the bedroll, hugging a still-warm water skin, Adal looked out into the night. The frogs were chirping at each other, and occasionally a branch rustled in the breeze, but there was no _boom_ and _spit_ like the thing she’d heard. Maybe it was gone. Maybe it was her imagination…

Either way, she hadn’t been very brave.

Her da had patted her on the head and told her it was fine, as they ate a dinner of bird-tasting mushroom and dogreed tuber, that it was more important that she was safe and sound. Adal picked at her lip. She’d run away, like a baby. She’d even found a stick to hit things with, and hadn’t even tried to fight.

She dozed off, woke again when the water skin was cold, a faint fog in the valley lit by false dawn. Ouray had shifted to prop his head on his fist, still upright, the fire smoldering and barely holding a flame. She watched him a long moment, then slid out of the bedroll, not making a sound. He didn’t stir, a bit of drool in one corner of his mouth.

Adal picked her way back uphill, watching for twigs that might break, twisting to keep from brushing against low branches and weeds. She had left a trail of kicked-up leaves and broken stems, all the way uphill, and she found her walking stick partway down. She held it up over her shoulder like a hunter’s spear, wishing it was sharper. The mist thickened as the sky got lighter, making her pause to peer into it, waiting for that awful shaggy _thing_ to loom up, with its naked fleshy head, to _look_ at her again…

A corner caught her eye, too regular a shape to be natural. She let out a sigh and leaned down for her da’s book, brushing dirt off the pages. Her basket was with it, overturned, and she crouched to stuff her things back in it, mushrooms and all. She tucked it under her arm, turning back the way she had come.

Above her, something rustled. Adal froze, maybe if she didn’t look it wouldn’t be there, maybe it wouldn’t be, maybe maybe maybe—

She looked up. It seemed to spread an flatten itself, perched on a branch, great broad fingers on the edge of its arms. A thick drip of flesh dangled off its snout as it turned, looking with one eye, the other, made a chuckling, gurgling squeak

“Adal? Adal, dearling, call out if—”

It leapt from the branch, lofting itself uphill. She couldn’t move as it puffed itself up, the bare blue skin on its neck reddedning. Adal raised her stick again, ready to throw, voice lost in fear.

“Adal? _Where are you!?_ ”

The thing gurgled at her again, and took a lurching step forward. Adal screamed and threw the stick, catching it in the chest and making it stumble. It hissed, and she grabbed a rock from the basket, missing it entirely. It righted itself, seemed to grow even larger as it charged.

_”Get down!”_

There was a crashing behind her, and Adal dropped. Ouray’s machete flashed as the monster leapt, and its body thudded to the ground beside her, still thrashing. She looked up at him, fumbling for the book. “I went back for—”

He picked her up, hugging her so tight she squeaked. “Don’t you _ever_ do that again,” he said, stroking her hair. “Don’t you _ever_ just wander off like that.”

“I’m okay, da,” she said, pushing away. She frowned at the tears on his face. “I wanted to be brave n’I didn’t—”

“Your ma is going to spank your feet,” he said, putting her down. “ _I_ ought to.” His face softened when her lip started to shake, and he knelt next to the monster. “That was _incredibly_ dangerous. Look at this.”

The thing’s head was gone, its body smaller, somehow. With it closer, still, Adal could make out the feathers, the wings. "Tom-turkey." Ouray picked up one of its feet, a spur as long as her hand sticking off the back of its leg. “See how long these are? How sharp? They _fight_ with these. Put your eye out faster than a sharp stick.”

“M’sorry…”

He tipped her chin up, looking her in the eye. “Don’t be sorry, be smarter. _Don’t wander off._ Promise me next time that you’ll wait, so I can go with you.”

Adal mumbled, and he frowned. “Promise, and I won’t tell your ma that you ran off.”

“Promise,” she said, drawing an X over her heart.

“Good girl.” He passed her the basket. “Are these the mushrooms you found?”

He slung the bird on his back, letting her chatter and show him her finds as they went back to pack up their camp.


End file.
